[RalphyS]

Quote: (Originally Posted by Prog)

Now, is it not possible that Saddam had WMDs and hid them from the inspectors, and by the time we were getting ready to attack them, he didn't have time to recover them and use them? That sounds highly possible to me. Of course, this is only speculation, but it isn't a half-answer. :P?

Well almost anything is possible, but is it likely? It's not like you didn't see the attack of the US coming, I personally remember the ultimate date for an attack being pronounced 2 months ahead of time on Dutch tv by military experts, so as I've stated before Saddam may have been cruel, but not a fool, he would also have known when he would have needed the WMD's. But let's assume for the sake of arguement he didn't have the time to recover them, how then did he find the time to ship them to Syria and what would he benefit from that, he must have realized that he would never survive an invasion as leader of Iraq. And if he didn't ship them to Syria, why haven't they been found. The only logical conclusion and I'm not the only one to have arrived at that, is that there were no WMD's (anymore).

Quote: (Originally Posted by Prog)

So, you think that the US may have disregarded any possible intelligence that Iraq didn't have any WMDs. That's fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but let's look at the facts. Like I stated, we had intelligence that said Iraq did have WMDs, so were we to disregard that intelligence, which possibly outweighs intelligence that says they didn't?

I never said that they should have disregarded any evidence for WMD's, but they should have had a balanced view in regard to the evidence for and against, and there have been former members of the Bush-government as well as others in high security positions, who stated that Bush and his cronies were specifically looking (under a microscope) for anything that might connect Iraq with 9/11. In my humble opinion we have a case of finding the suspect first and than trying to tie him to the evidence and that's not balanced and I really wouldn't call it "intelligence".

And based on my conclusion in the first remark in this post, I find it rather troubling that 'intelligence' for WMD's outweighed that against them. It's like stating that before Christmas the evidence for Santa's existence outweighed that against his existence. And what troubles me even more is that if it was "faulty intelligence", it is brushed under the carpet with an attitude of 'oops, we did it again' (to quote miss Spears). "Sorry, slight mistake, we will make sure it never happens again, sorry for the thousands of casualties". I remember even Dubya beforehand stating that war should be a last resource, one of the few remarks of his I do agree with, but from his actions I never saw any support for that attitude. The whole Iraqi-war and especially the 'securing the peace'-part were more of an ''let's go the war now and worry about the consequences later"-attitude, in spite of many warnings, which predicted the situations that later did come into existence.